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rosekk 's review for:
The Lamplighters
by Emma Stonex
3.5 stars, really.
I was put off when, in the first page of the book, the narrator talks about how the sea is like nothing else and then, just one semi-colon later, goes on to say what the sea is like. This oddity was, thankfully, not representative of the rest of the book: generally the quality of writing was strong.
A lot else was good about the book as well - the depth of the characters, the variety between them, their distinct voices. The whole idea of the book as well - lighthouses have an inherent romance and spookiness, and a mysterious disappearance from one makes a great foundation for a tale.
What I disliked about the book was the conclusion. It felt too much like it was intent on having it's cake and eating it. On the one hand, the audience are given a clear resolution to the mystery (even though this is exactly the kind of story that could get away with some ambiguity), but the surviving characters don't. They don't even get a hint - nor are they all exposed to the knowledge that each of them has. All the characters in this are islands, it appears. So what was the point in the story and the characters journey through it? None of them learn anything new, or change vastly. The 3 survivors meet at the end, which is a slight shift in their dynamic, but given what the audience now knows about one of them, that does sit right with me. I think the intention was to stress how much other people are a mystery, but that's undercut by the fact that the audience knows all, as it feels less like that lack of knowledge is inherent to the world, and more as though the plot structure has contrived to keep the revelations from the characters.
I was put off when, in the first page of the book, the narrator talks about how the sea is like nothing else and then, just one semi-colon later, goes on to say what the sea is like. This oddity was, thankfully, not representative of the rest of the book: generally the quality of writing was strong.
A lot else was good about the book as well - the depth of the characters, the variety between them, their distinct voices. The whole idea of the book as well - lighthouses have an inherent romance and spookiness, and a mysterious disappearance from one makes a great foundation for a tale.
What I disliked about the book was the conclusion. It felt too much like it was intent on having it's cake and eating it. On the one hand, the audience are given a clear resolution to the mystery (even though this is exactly the kind of story that could get away with some ambiguity), but the surviving characters don't. They don't even get a hint - nor are they all exposed to the knowledge that each of them has. All the characters in this are islands, it appears. So what was the point in the story and the characters journey through it? None of them learn anything new, or change vastly. The 3 survivors meet at the end, which is a slight shift in their dynamic, but given what the audience now knows about one of them, that does sit right with me. I think the intention was to stress how much other people are a mystery, but that's undercut by the fact that the audience knows all, as it feels less like that lack of knowledge is inherent to the world, and more as though the plot structure has contrived to keep the revelations from the characters.